Pointless Celebrities

I thought, having done University Challenge, Eggheads and Mastermind, that my quizzing days were done, but two weeks ago I got an email asking if I'd like to do 'Celebrity Pointless' - the next day!
Well it meant more money for the National Autistic Society and a few bob for me, at the risk of possible deep embarrassment, so of course I said yes.

It was a 'Record Breakers' episode, so had Linford Christie (current 100m British record holder), Sally Gunnell (current 400m hurdles British record holder), Janet Ellis & Andy Akinwolere from Blue Peter (longest running TV series), the tallest man and woman in Britain (7'7" and 6'10") and me and Kellie Bright from the Archers ( world's longest running drama series).

I'm not telling the result - but we weren't embarrassing (apart from me getting rugby world cup date wrong - aaargh).

Garrotted in Budapest

An actor's life is varied. Sometimes there is no work at all and you live in terror. Sometimes it's grindingly hard work and boring, sometimes you have to swallow any sense of pride you may have and prostitute yourself for money - but then sometimes you get to have fun.

I've just got back from Budapest, playing General Arthur Ogilvy in 'Dracula'. A very early call for an 8 o'clock flight saw me very tired at the studio at midday, where I met the stunt co-ordinator and my garroter  Tibor.

Having satisfied them that I could die sufficiently well, I was driven to an apartment hotel of great luxury, where I spent the afternoon preparing the audiobook I was in the middle of recording in Hackney (see previous moan).

A long walk down the Danube, remembering the last time I was here, with my father in a campervan in 1968, before a delicious room service meal and an early night.

A late call the next morning for a costume fitting with fellow General, the delightful Peter Woodward, and the afternoon was our own. I walked in sub-zero temperature to the Szechenyi Baths and Pool, heated by thermal springs and as used by the Romans. On arrival I was persuaded to have my feet eaten by fish, an extraordinary experience, with very little seeming effect.

I then went into the pool which really was like going back in time. With no clothes to betray the period, it really could have been Ancient Rome - an enormous complex of baths of every different type, saunas, Turkish baths, then an hour long massage.

It was 3pm and I felt I needed to see something of Budapest, so I thought I should bite the bullet and turn into a tourist - I got onto a red London Big Bus, sitting on top in the cold, as I was so hot from the baths. Within ten minutes I was frozen and after an hour I had to get off because I had lost all feeling in my lower body.
I must have walked about four miles back to the hotel and never warmed up. An amazing city and I want to go back and see it properly - maybe for some dental tourism.


Another late call the next day and after fitting sideburns and moustache I was ready to be garrotted.
The studio system in Eastern Europe means there are hundreds of crew - I don't think I've ever been on a film set with so many people. I'd never met the director, nor my fellow cast, apart from Peter, so after short introductions it was straight into a rehearsal. I had a lot of lines, a lot of business pouring tea, then had to die convincingly and kick over a table in the right direction, then lie dead not breathing while the rest of the scene took forever to finish.

I then did it again, and again, and again - I reckon I must have died over 25 times. What a totally absurd way to earn a living. Then out for a lovely meal with new actor friends including the utterly charming Robert Bathurst, late night as couldn't sleep for adrenaline, then plane back with new chums to finish the audiobook in Hackney in the evening.

I'm sixty in June. One of these days I won't be up for these adventures, but I hope that's a long way away.

RIP Splat the Cat

So goodbye then Splat, after all these years.

My relationship with you has always been ambivalent. On the one hand I shall miss you being there, but on the other hand, that's all you ever did. You were just there. Never, in your sixteen years, did you show me a moment's affection, or cat-like pretence of such, even when desperate for food. You'd cry and moan and look insistent, but never do feline wiles like rubbing up against a leg or purring. I'd have fallen for it - I'd have known it was cupboard love but that would have done me, even a simulation of empathy would have been fine, but no, you rejected all tender approaches from me since the day I bought you in a pet shop. You were the one bossing the other kittens and you were beautiful and I thought you showed character. Turned out you were either plain bonkers or seriously abused.

What did you think I was going to do to you when I picked you up for a cuddle? Eh? I know, once, when carrying a tray of glasses downstairs, I did kick you out of the way to stop myself from tripping and dying, and I did call you some names, but that was in 1998. Did you hold it against me ever since? Was it because I'm tall? A man? You weren't much better with Judy and the boys but at least they tell stories of purring and sitting in laps. Never. You never sat in my lap and purred. In sixteen years. That's rejection.

But there's a picture of you being held by Jasper when he was about eight, and you've been part of the boys growing up, and you were more than an aspidistra or a painting on the wall; for all your self-containment - you were alive and you were Splattycat, and now you are no more. And we'll miss you.

My one-man show

"Love Your Chocolates" reaches the end of its current tour this weekend in a series of three shows in village halls in Norfolk. Here's the schedule:

Tonight, Friday 21st September
Welborne Village Hall
Church Road
Welborne, Dereham
Norfolk NR20 3LH

Saturday 22nd
Magdalen Village Hall
Park Crescent
Magdalen
Norfolk PE34 3BU

Sunday 23rd
St. Botolph's Church
Gayton Road
Grimston, King's Lynn
Norfolk PE32 1BG

If you're up Norfolk way, it would be lovely to see you!

TV Commercials

I recently came across this commercial for Wall's Feast that I was in.
We filmed it in the Masai Mara in Kenya in 1987.

I never recorded it and haven't seen it for 25 years. The extraordinary thing about it was that it looks as though it was filmed in a studio, but everything you see is for real.
We flew from Nairobi in an old Dakota,

and set up an enormous camp in the middle of the Masai Mara.

The giraffes in the background were being herded by four landrovers.

The setting sun with the acacia tree for the end shot was timed to perfection so that we embraced at exactly the right moment. The shot of the girl (Emma Harbour) with the giraffes behind was us standing on top of a landrover with a camera assistant waving a small branch in the top left of shot, while the reverse on me was shot at a safari lodge.

An entire camera crew were housed in a tented encampment provided by Abercrombie and Kent, with an enormous support team of caterers, drivers and armed guards to defend us against elephants and lions at night. I had my own tent with verandah, personal valet and shower. It was just like the thirties.

My 'gun' was a lorry starting handle with a it of wood attached - 

The ice creams were kept in a cold box with dry ice so that some of the Feasts were rock solid, and some were half melted. When I bit into them I never knew which it was going to be, rock or bleucchhh.
We waited for four days for the skies to clear and for the incessant rain to stop so we could get the shots. Driving everywhere looking for giraffe and elephant, and getting badly stuck -

During this time we played liar dice, to a standard never since surpassed. I ended up as the champion and was rewarded by having iced water poured down my trousers.

Today it would be shot in a studio in a day. In the glory days of advertising, agencies would write copy that demanded we all go off to Africa for a fortnight and have a riot. I was also paid an absolute fortune, that only slightly compensated for the fact that my son Will, then aged 3, was in the Whittington Hospital in a totally frozen London with suspected Still's Disease (juvenile chronic arthritis). It turned out he didn't have it and was fine, but not before they'd pumped him full of steroids and seriously worried the pants off everybody, and it was not a time to go away.

I wrote a song and a radio play about it.

Mauvais quart d'heure

Bloody hell, that was scary. I just opened up Powerpoint on the Mac to go through my show for next Friday, and ALL the text was garbled. I mean nonsensical, complete gobbledigook. I opened up a previous version, same thing. WHAT???
This would mean no show. I was panicking. Then I looked at the text and realised it had done a Caesar shift one space to the right, so that 'Good Evening' became 'Hppe Fwfojoh'. Was it a virus? I opened up other files and exactly the same thing, so at least it wasn't just the version that I'd just done a week's editing on. The fact that the whole program was consistently weird was slightly heartening. So, like you do, I shut down Powerpoint and re-booted it. Massive and huge sigh of relief. All was well.
Well what on earth was all that about then?????
Relieved, Norfolk.

2012 Tour Dates

Here are the dates so far for my re-vamped show, "Love Your Chocolates" in 2012

Friday 3rd Feb The Exchange, Sturminster Newton, 7.30pm
Friday 10th Feb Haile Village Hall, Cumbria 7.30pm
Saturday 11th Feb Ireleth Temperance Hall, Cumbria 8.00pm
Sunday 12th Feb Lamplugh Village Hall, Cumbria 6.30pm
Saturday 24th March Sarah Thorne Theatre Club, Broadstairs Q&A 7.30pm
Monday 17th Sept Beccles Public Hall, Smallgate, Beccles 7.30pm

Happy New Year everyone - hope to see you there.